And you can rest assured that I obviously misplayed.
Our story takes us back to a faraway time when Extended was a fun format… Full of degenerate combos, lands that cost you 2 life, and ghastly ghouls swinging from the graveyards. Along came the wise mage GerryT, who broke all conceived notions of “fair play” and created the end-all-be-all deck that dominated the format until its death by the mighty hand of the Coastal Wizards. Thopter Depths was arguably one of the most dominant decks of its format – we’re talking Jund, Faeries, Caw-Blade dominance – and I’ve never played such a beautiful creation since its’ legality was unduly ended. DDT was the most multi-dynamic deck I’ve ever seen in my time of playing Magic.
As per usual, the very last PTQ of each season is typically held in Rochester, NY on the last Sunday of the season. Your esteemed author had been playing jank like Hive Mind combo, or worse – Zoo (*shudders*) – throughout the season but wanted to try his hand at something a bit more advanced (something with islands). Dan Lanthier hooked me up and I went down to Rochester literally never having played a match with the deck at all.
Naturally starting off the PTQ 5-0, drawing into the top8, and breezing through Affinity in the quarters and the Mirror in the semis, I am paired in the finals against a fine gentleman that I had also beaten in the swiss rounds, and I was his only loss on the day. He had an interesting take on Scapeshift, with aggressive beaters and Landfall (before Valakut-Scapeshift was even a deck). I’d seen all I needed to know about his deck from our match in the Swiss, particularly that he could swing through blockers by giving his Scapeshift-pumped guys protection from colors from multiple Sejiri Steppes. I also knew that if I wanted to dome him with my 20/20, I’d need to be clear from Ghost Quarter and/or Path to Exile.
Let’s just assume for a second that I had near-perfect knowledge of his list based on what I saw from our previous match, and let’s operate under that assumption and provide you the decklists we were both using:
Ok, here’s the board state…
There are literally dozens of decision permutations that can be taken in this board state. A couple tidbits of info you’ll need to know to properly find the best line of play…
– It’s important to realize that we are potentially dead to Scapeshift when he untaps. He can give both his creatures pro-black and due to his Flagstones triggers, each guy could grow to be larger than 9/9.
– Second, due to our mana constraints, we can essentially cast/activate only 2 things.
– He has 3 cards in hand. I’ve been keeping him off of creatures trying to dig into my combos with Confidant, using up Smothers and Deathmarks. I’ve also had that Explosives in play for approx 2 turns to discourage him from casting more 2-drops (Geopede, Goyf, Kudzu). His hand is probably full of either: 2-drops, Scapeshifts, Path to Exiles, Celestial Purges (based on my read, could be anything really I suppose).
– If we can survive his one combat step while casting our Hexmage/Depths, we can kill him on our turn.
– There’s no Sword of the Meek in my graveyard.
– Knight of the Reliquary was just cast, and is thus summoning sick.
– He knows I have both Hexmage and Depths in hand, thanks to Bob’s reveal triggers. It is likely he’s going to want to kill us as soon as humanly possible.
As stated before, I made the wrong play… and it took the length of the drive back to Ottawa to figure out what I believe is the absolute right play. Let’s see what you all have to say.